September 6, 2020 – West Bend, WI – Their classmates may not know it but Addison, 6, and Nathan, 7, of West Bend are entomologists and they spent the summer improving their education as lepidopterists.
Together the brother and sister raised over 100 monarch butterflies and they know so much …. they could teach a class.
“The boy butterflies have a spot on the inside of their wings and the girls don’t,” said Addison. “That’s how you tell the difference between a boy butterfly and a girl butterfly.”
The kids and their mom, Katy Moon, have been raising butterflies for several years. They have a garden full of milkweed and colorful flowers and they’ve built a large enclosure with netting and sticks to watch as their science project moves through the stages from egg to caterpillar and then chrysalis to butterfly.
“We find them (the eggs) under the bottom of the leaves of milkweed,” said Nathan. “My mom had the idea of raising them because they’re getting extinct.”
The family glued sticks inside the frame of the butterfly house. After the caterpillars would spin into a chrysalis the kids would attach those to the sticks and watch the metamorphosis; within 10 days the green chrysalis would turn transparent and a black and orange butterfly would emerge.
“I like it because we get to release the butterflies after we hold them,” said Nathan.
